PUTIN'S SPECIAL UKRAINE OPERATION: HE CONTINUES TO DIG DEEPER INTO A HELLISH PIT, AND WINTER IS HERE!

The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old, beginning from 2009 with President Obama's election. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the shapes and directions of American politics and culture, with occasional comments on the potential impact of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted. 

Putin’s Ukraine debacle has turned into a more giant flop than it looked 2 weeks into his February 24, 2022 "Special Operation" (i.e., the invasion of Ukraine). 

And, Putin's big 'Fail', it seems, is because he did not see how fully he had already conquered his demons (the fearful anxiety from the days of the French-speaking Russian court that Russia was inadequate when compared to western civilization, i.e., that Russia wasn't really 'western' enough..just as Russia wasn't really Asian enough to play marbles with China.)

But despite the good position Russia was in domestically, internationally, and economically...and getting better with every barrel and liter of crude oil and gas that were flowing through the pipelines from Russia's Artic oil fields to Europe ... Putin still made an ill-conceived move that has substantially damaged Russia's global political and economic goodwill (and stability) built up since 1990. 

Putin set in motion a downhill rolling of a heretofore magically expanding, social-economic-political snowball full of riches. Things have steadily worsened since the Special Ukraine Operation began..

But Putin's latest move is perhaps more disastrous than the others that came before - his so-called "mobilization" of "300,000" patriotic fighters (read, 'untrained and physically doubtful') to go immediately to the Ukraine battlefront...often with just a few days of 'training', and badly equipped with WW2 (or even WW1) rifles...and virtually no winter clothing. (Conscripts have been 'asked' to shop for essential battlefield equipment themselves or funded by their families!)

I predicted the lack of training and support for these patriots in my September 21, 2022, post (UKRAINE: THE LAMENT OF NEW RUSSIAN CONSCRIPTS) ... which was a very truncated (arrogant even?) prediction of a disaster,... for the conscripts. But I was not prepared for the truth as it turned out. From that post: 

"The lament of a new Russian conscript headed for Ukraine — cotton shirt and pants (& winter’s coming), sneakers, a canteen of meth-laced weak tea, a WW2/1 rifle, and 30 bullets… you won’t last long enough to even use that. But, 'Rodina'."

But there is more. Putin's Problem is not just his current failures in Ukraine.

While Putin is virtually an absolute ruler, his absolute powers have led to a grandiosely myopic complacency that has prevented him and his generals from modernizing their leadership styles and especially updating Russia's political-military strategies and objectives. Russia has failed especially in keeping current with the tactical field operations of the Russian military itself. 

Combine these failures with the FACT that for the last 30 years or so, Russia’s generals and officer elite have been willing, if not initiating, factors in selling Russian technology and military equipment on the global black market. This has made the Russian army a paper mache' Tiger that in reality is a carnival ask made of gum wrappers and old rubber bands.

In terms of economics, Putin nearly had it all but threw it all away...the fox was in the hen house but greedily pounced too soon and for no good reason. 

Up until February 24, 2022, with his "Special Ukraine Operation," Putin had won Russia's 21st-century war - an economic, political-energy resource-intelligence dominance over the western world, including manipulating the political clockworks of America itself. 

Did Putin fail to recognize how fully he had conquered his demons? The answer has to be, "Yes". Western Europe was dependent on Russian fossil energy, the Russian people were pacified by the commercial detente that brought McDonald’s into their world at home, and perhaps the best of everything was that Russia’s satellites were happy, or at least not terribly unhappy, being commercial partners with what they thought was Putin’s modern leadership based on enlightened economic partnerships.  

In February 2022, Putin’s stupid invasion of Ukraine swiftly erased much, if not all goodwill (and apparent stability) built up since 1990. 

But Russia's loss of face and respect happened so swiftly that it raises QUESTIONS as to what exactly was happening underneath the Russian mask?  (we have a good idea that there was all along much less than we thought, or feared.). The big question now is, "will, or can Putin save his, and Russia's skin?"